Self hosted runner: Execute command from Bitbucket runner to another container

[nioanto]

Hi to all,

on my personal host I have a 3 container:

•  .Bitbucker runner
• . debian with dpkg-buildpackage script
• . apache web server

When I login inside Bitbucket runner container, from inside  I can do it  "docker ps ",    the output is that:

from Bitbucker runner container I can do  docker ps;  "docker exec -it container_name foo_bar" and/or "docker run"

but

When I run my pipeline:

image: atlassian/default-image:3
options:
  docker: true
      
pipelines:
  default:
      - step:    
          name: 'execute command from external container'       
          script:
            - docker exec -itu infallible_vaughan  any_command_you_want
            

I retrive this error:

Error: No such container:

someone can help me to use the container that are running on my server from Bitbucket pipeline?

[Theodora Boudale]

Hi @nioanto,

In order to provide isolation and reproducibility, a runner doesn’t provide access directly to the host file system, so it is not possible to access any Docker containers that are running on the host machine during a Pipelines (runner) build.

You could run a docker container during the build with a docker run command in your yml file and it should then be possible to execute docker commands in that container with docker exec, but without the -it options, as they aren't supported in Pipelines.

Also, just a heads up, you need to add a runs-on parameter to a step in the bitbucket.pipelines.yml file with at least the self-hosted label, in order for the build to run on your runner:

• https://support.atlassian.com/bitbucket-cloud/docs/configure-your-runner-in-bitbucket-pipelines-yml/

I'm not sure if you have that already in the yml file of your repo and removed it when you copied and pasted the contents of the yml file here, I just mention it in case it's missing.

Kind regards,
Theodora